How to use the Contacts button on the Avaya 1608 Handset

Here’s a quick way to find any phone number in your organisation…..

You can use the contacts button on the Avaya 1608 phone to easily make calls to people within your organisation without needing to know their extension number.

First of all press the contacts button on your handset. From this first screen you can select someone to call. You will notice that the directory says “All” and by default you have access to every different type of contact.

If you press the right arrow button you can see how the phone organises contacts into different types which allows you to get to the lists of people easily.

First of all is Personal. This is contacts that you’ve added to your phone.

Next is External....these are people that have been added to the central contact list by your system administrator.

Users are everyone on the system that has an extension number assigned to them.

Your system may have grouped certain numbers together so for instance there may be a Finance group that includes everyone in the Finance department and if you were to select to phone the Finance group you would ring all the handsets in that group. Unless you know exactly which group the contact is in it’s probably easiest to leave it on “All”.

Now comes the good bit.....it’s so easy to find someone. Once you’ve pressed the contacts button just start typing out their name on the number pad, pressing whichever button contains the next letter in their name.

Don’t think about where on the button the letter is. If the letter is on the button just press it...the system is intelligent enough to find a match.

For example if you want to find Karen press 5 2 3. When you’ve pressed the first two buttons maybe the system will think that you want Jackie but by the time you’ve pressed the third it knows that it’s Karen you’re looking for.

Just keep going until it finds the contact you’re looking for and if there’s more than one person on the system with that name you will get a little arrow appear next to their name and you can use the arrow buttons to scroll down the list.

Then hit the Call softkey and your phone will start dialing.

It really is that simple. The days of keeping a printed out list of extension numbers are over.